tank, much of the discussion around forming a Foundation has been private. Can you summarize briefly what value a legal entity adds to AHK?
In the interest of transparency, how much does it cost and where does that money go?
Thanks.

The future of the forum: Poll
There was more but those threads were hidden or deleted. or i cannot locate them. Eventually after discussing it several times and trying to reason with Polyethene we gave up and began discussing options to fork. That thread got deleted so I erected this domain so we could talk safely. Several including Lexikos,fincs,Jaco0646,TLM and so many others decided it should be permanant. It saddened us to walk away from the home Chris had created but it seemed we were on a path of destruction. so we debated and decided upon domains and raised funds (user genrosity ) to secure the domains and hosting we are using now. Still Polyethene wouldnt budge. all we wanted was the kind of forum support we once enjoyed with code tags and readable color schemes. We wanted him to let someone else in if he was busy. We even found a way to reach out to Chris the founder.

Chris from an email exchange Ihad with him wrote:Having a real organization, especially a legal entity, would be quite an achievement. I’m glad you’ve done some preliminary research into it because it’s far beyond anything I have any knowledge of. My response to your proposal is that as long as I wouldn’t be responsible for the legal aspects or any other part of maintaining the organization (keeping it going), I wouldn’t mind having some kind of guiding/suggesting position just the way you described, with some emergency authority in case things ever departed radically from the original spirit of the project (such as moving toward commercialization or bundling third-party, disreputable software with AutoHotkey).

Recently, Polyethene who always wanted the best for this community came to the negotiating table. He was willing to had over the domain and let someone else take over. But how long till someone else repeates the mistakes of the past. Maybe i would. I am human and am torn away. I have elected to grant server access to this domain to several trusted admins. that way if something goes wrong anyone can take over. But i want to do more. I want to fulfill Chris's wish also. do this properly.

So here we are. LegalZoom shows me a cost of $299 to create an LLC. we would place Chris as Chairman with no actual responsibilities but absolute authority should he choose to use it. The LLC would take ownership ov this domain and AutoHotkey.com. To be managed initially by Lexikos, fincs, and the other site moderators, Giving rise to the opportunity for Chris to make changes to that organization if he sees fit. Any funds collected would be used to file the necesary paperwork and put it all registered officially and legally. The paypal account and any remaining funds would be transfered to this LLC upon creation. No one that is part of this will collect salary or fee. we are as we have always been a volunteer organization. In the interest of staying with Chris's wish to not monetize ahk from time to time we may need to open up and allow donations. These donations should be given to support this foundation and not to elicit favor or rank.

Thanks for the summary, tank.
Regarding the proposed LLC, I guess I'm still unsure of its value to AHK. Many of us are probably aware of foundations like Apache and Mozilla, but they're in another ballpark compared to AHK. When I google the pros and cons of an LLC, the issues are taxes, fundraising, marketing, licensing, copyrights, and liability. My understanding is that we just want someone to own a domain. Is it overkill to form an LLC for that?

To prevent the weakness of a single person that can cause failure. .an llc allows the players to change without the need to transfer ownership again. And why can't we strive for the level of apache and linux?

Polyethene is attempting a conversion to PHPBB3. From there no firm descisions are made. There will be public discusions on what to do. No action regarding the forums will occur without eliciting feedback

One of the main concerns regarding forming a "foundation" through an LLC is the necessity of standards.

In most cases, our community here is building a knowledge-base of high-quality human-machine interaction aides. However there are some cases, such as keyloggers, game hacks, and other similarly-oriented scripts and code that take our community towards a negative assessment as a group. What I mean by this is that while most of what is created under the AutoHotkey name is legitimate and beneficial to anyone, there are situations where what is created is not always legally allowed. How will this change as we transform from a minimal, community-styled system to a founded LLC?

Overall, I am increasingly more invested in this venture, and this community, so above all else: Thank you, tank, for taking initiative and expending effort to further our future with regards to credibility, safety, and community.

the tenants of this product will not change. we have and will continue to filter obvious wrongdoing.

That said nor can we be responsible for every misuse. as things are right now either I or Poly(depending on the domain) would be financially liable for any misdeed. an LLC also serves to separate person from entity.

Consider work done to automate web pages. the implications to hacker wannabe's is endless. violating a license isnt a criminal matter but there could be legal concerns if we appeared to support it.

Forming the foundation does not commit us to a set of rules. those conversations will happen. we still have to decide which domain becomes primary and which one redirects. Which forum to keep and which to lock and archive. but once ownership is moved to a newly created entity with Chris as its protector we can focus on the important matters and move unhindered towards it.

nnnik wrote:This forum is working, unlike the other forum, so I think its better to keep this forum software.

This. I don't mind if the official domain is to become autohotkey.com again, however IMO the data/site should be the same as what currently is hosted on ahkscript.org. The old forum would of course be archived and accessible.